TELEVISION

An aging actor, his best friend, and some others navigate fame and frustration in Hollywood.

Verity’s current project is the fifth installment of a commercial blockbuster movie franchise in which he plays “green old void Bly.” His closest confidant is 40-something scriptwriter and -editor Helen; the two met in a diner days after Verity moved to Los Angeles and have spent decades intertwined, having sex sometimes and often living together. Verity is a heavy drinker, vain, obsessed with beauty, and beautiful himself—“with that face he would have gotten famous if he couldn’t act his way out of a shoe,” as Helen puts it. Verity gets the idea to lottery off his salary and his percentage of box office sales from his newest movie to someone who’s bought a ticket. The decision comes on the heels of an eyebrow-raising GQ profile, and the winner is announced on the TikTok account of “hitherto unknown” actress Nina Walker, who’s admittedly too young for Verity but with whom he shacks up anyway. These actions scandalize his professional colleagues but don’t surprise Helen. The first-person narration alternates between Verity and Helen until readers are introduced to Phoebe, a young aspiring scriptwriter looking for ways to find support for her fledgling career. The full extent of Phoebe’s connection to Helen and Verity isn’t revealed until quite late in the book. The meandering prose and ruminations on fame and the industry certainly have touches of Joan Didion, who’s explicitly mentioned twice, while Verity’s anachronisms (he refers to cellphones as “rectangles”) and dismal attitude frequently feel Holden Caulfield–esque. An example: Thinking about the relationship between older men and beautiful women, he remarks, “I felt pretty depressed. I really did. I was all over the place.” Though readers may find the winding plot a little thin, Rothery’s prose is frequently a knockout, and her sense of literary style is enjoyable.

A slick and largely entertaining debut about the entertainment world.